Valentine’s Day Deliveries at Smith

This Saturday Smith students may use their Facebook pages to send virtual flowers or water balloons or glasses of wine to one another in celebration of Valentine’s Day. Similar gifts were sent to and from Smith students in the late 1930s, but it was the Northampton post office and local telegraph employees who were responsible for those real deliveries.

In fact there were so many deliveries on February 14th that Valentine’s Day in Northampton was the busiest day of the year for local telegraph office employees. The Northampton post office was also overrun. Typically its canceling machine handled 10,000 letters on a single day; just before Valentine’s Day in 1937 the post office was canceling 19,000 letters per day! The local Hampshire Gazette newspaper reported that “the number of special deliveries increased from the average of 75 for daily business to 332 on Saturday and 16 on Sunday [Valentine's Day itself].”

What were Smith students receiving and sending? Unusual deliveries were noted in press releases sent out by the Smith College Press Board detailing various types of valentines. In 1938 the gifts included ducks, goldfish, a ham sandwich, and even a few flowers and boxes of chocolates.

Holiday Vesper Services at Smith

This weekend the College will hold its annual Christmas Vespers service in John M. Green Hall (Dec 7, 2008 4:00pm and 7:30pm). Did you know that the Vesper services were held from early in the College’s history?

An entry in the diary of Lydia Kendall, Class of 1895 for December 1892 describes then-president, L. Clark Seelye “His face fairly shown with the joy that he felt…He spoke to us very tenderly and very sweetly and left us with many lovely thoughts.” The musical portion of the service had a soloist, organ music, a violinist, and the choir.

Christmas Vesper Service 1892

Antiphonal singing between the choir and congregation began in the early 1900s. This program documents the songs and verse used in the 1906 service:

Christmas Vesper Service program 1906

Once John M. Greene Hall was completed in 1909, the service was opened up to members of the Northampton and surrounding communities. If you attend this weekend’s services, you may see scenes similar to these from 1947:

Smith-Amherst Glee Club performance, 1947

Audience at Christmas Vespers in John M. Greene Hall, n.d.